Thought some of you might be interested in the Guinness record broken by a team from the University of New South Wales in Sydney:
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/aussie-car-breaks-a-world-speed-record-20110107-19i7j.htmlWith a bit of news footage:
http://ten.com.au/video-player.htm?movideo_m=86410&movideo_p=40983
Or some extended footage on youtube if you prefer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI8sApVfOoMIt's taken me over 5 years to convince and prod this team to break a land speed record, but yesterday they finally did it with their most recent car, Sunswift IV. I led the aerodynamic team back in 2008 when we originated and developed the design for what went on to become the team's most successful vehicle to date.
We had originally hoped to go for the FIA mile/km, but this is a road car (designed for the Green Global Challenge) that needs a run-up and it's extremely hard to find a completely flat piece of road over 2 miles long that someone will give over to a bunch of students. The Royal Australian Navy were kind enough to let us use their base at Nowra, and we settled for the Guinness Record (which was considerably higher speed than the FIA record but with more relaxed rules regarding track gradients).
The previous 22 year, 78km/h record broken was set by the multi-million dollar GM Sunraycer using a 1.5kW array. Sunswift averaged 88km/h on a fairly cloudy day - a partial splash of sun came at just the right moment to give a boost over both the initial and return runs - with a peak speed of 95km/h in the time trap, on an approximate array output of 1.2kW.
It's a great achievement for a team largely made up of undergraduate students, and they now turn their attention to the 2011 Global Green Challenge rally from Darwin to Adelaide later in the year, where they will be one of the favourites to win the solar race.
Not nearly as exciting as going hundreds of mph on the salt of course, but we're really happy with the result!